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Pros: A haunting, magical story. Solid performances by the Cast. Jack Cardiff's photography of Ava Gardner.

Cons: The film's antique quality, which is what the literate, aesthetic Lewin always aimed for.

The Bottom Line: Pioneer Independent Producer/Writer/Director Albert Lewin, influenced by Michael Powell's THE RED SHOES, went for broke in this baroque retelling of The Flying Dutchman Legend. Its reputation is rising. 

 ***** 

Two years after THE RED SHOES (The Archers, 1948), Albert Lewin wrote and directed what, at the time, was considered a curiosity: PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN. Whereas the first picture solidified the International reputation of The Archers (as J. Arthur Rank's Powell/Pressburger unit was known), PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN became a financial and critical disaster which put an end to Lewin's remarkable series of independent Hollywood movies, in a day when "independent" was a really dirty word. 

I have dealt with my favorite film, THE RED SHOES, elsewhere. Now I intend to discuss in this review, and a subsequent one, two pioneer independent films influenced by it: PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN (1951) and THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA (Mankiewicz, 1954). 

Long before Pandora, Harvard graduate Albert Lewin had gone to work for MGM in 1924, allying himself with the powerful Head of Production: Irving G. Thalberg. He rose to the position of producer for such notable films as MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (Lloyd, 1935) and THE GOOD EARTH (Franklin, 1937). After Thalberg's death, Lewin's influence spread in L. B. Mayer's Hollywood Empire, but he always pined to create real Motion Picture Art, in a town where art was sneered at by those in power. To paraphrase a recent comment on one of my reviews, Lewin's artistic ambitions were thought to have about them "the smell of a frustrated amateur screenwriter." He longed to make the Philistines and the Critics praise his work. 

Surprisingly, with his own money, Lewin produced, wrote and directed adaptations of Somerset Maugham's novel of a Gauguin-like artist, THE MOON AND SIX PENCE (1942); Oscar Wilde's Faustian THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GREY (1945); and De Maupassant's tale of a rogue, THE PRIVATE AFFAIRS OF BEL AMI (1947). Each featured an acerbic George Saunders, a series of exotic beauties, plus exquisite photography and camera angles (of a Wellsian kind). The films were, as they say, critically acclaimed, and modestly successful at the box office. Lewin saved his pennies for the Big Production. 

PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN was it. 

Although the first two films contained color sequences, he could not afford an entire Technicolor production; besides, few pictures created in color before 1948 would meet Lewin's definition of Art. THE RED SHOES changed all that. A story incorporating an allegorical ballet, based on a fairy tale, which commented on a ballerina's tragic conflict between fame and marriage, Art and Passion -- done with original music and choreography, new camera and color techniques -- it must have been a revelation to Lewin. 

In 1950, Lewin took leave and moved to British MGM to shoot a full color film based on a modern telling of the Legend of the Flying Dutchman. For the production, he hired the brilliant photographer of THE RED SHOES, Jack Cardiff, who had moved toward Hollywood with such pictures as Hitchcock's UNDER CAPRICORN (1949) and Henry Hathaway's THE BLACK ROSE (1951). Lewin also signed one of the stars of THE RED SHOES, Marius Goring, to play a frustrated lover of Pandora. 

For the title parts, he retaned the reigning movie beauty of her time, Ava Gardner, as Pandora Reynolds, a darling of the modern gods; and James Mason, then a leading British romantic star, for Captain Hendrick van der Zee, The Flying Dutchman. He commissioned an original film score from Modern Classical Composer Alan Rawsthorne (one of few he ever did), and set about filming in Britain and Spain. 

The shoot took 16 weeks, long for that time -- long even for Lewin. He was famous for elaborate preparation, taking hours to prepare a shot, hours photographing a scene, providing his editor with far more angles and cover shots than was then the practice. The result is always evident in a finished Lewin film. When his process works, it is magic. When it does not, a lack of spontaneity overcomes the perfection. PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN displayed both results. 

The story is this: In the Spring of 1930, Pandora Reynolds, a singer from the American Midwest, has joined the International Set and finds herself visiting an old friend, an archeologist (Harold Warrener), in the ancient Spanish port of Esperanza. 

After one admirer (Marius Goring) commits suicide, she becomes engaged to an Englishman (Nigel Patrick), who pushes his handmade performance model racing car over a cliff for her. However, once she has agreed to marry him, he disappoints her when he restores the car and, on the beaches of Esperanza, wins the World Speed Record. 

The parallels of PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN with THE RED SHOES are clear but not exact. Vickie Page in . . . SHOES is a novice society dancer who falls under the influence of an impresario, Lermontov. All who meet her, in some sense, are enchanted by her. When she falls in love with a composer/conductor for Lermontov's ballet company, the stress of marriage and Art harms the work of both, and leads to Vicki's death. 

Lest you think I exaggerate the link between THE RED SHOES and PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN, when Pandora asks Goring not to drink anymore, he, by coincidence or design, says: "Not tonight or any other night." And having poisoned himself, he drops dead. Those same words are contained in the final speech of THE RED SHOES, as Impresario Lermontov announces that Vicki Page will not -- can not -- dance in the revival of "The Red Shoes." 

Just when our heroine's resemblance to Pandora, mythic Greek symbol of calamity and hope, has been established, a mysterious ship sails into the Harbor, captained by Hendrick van der Zee (Mason). Pandora is drawn to him when she swims out to the ship, and is amazed to find the Captain, as if by Fate, painting her portrait. 

Meanwhile, in the background, is another former admirer, Juan Montalvo, the Great Bull Fighter (Mario Cabre, a real matador), who has sworn to kill any rival between him and Pandora. Montalvo is under a curse because his Gypsy mother left her tribe to marry his father. The mother reads the cards and predicts her son's death is imminent if he continues to pursue Pandora. 

The glue which holds the story together, of course, is that van der Zee (of the Sea), hundreds of years ago, returned from a voyage, found his wife apparently unfaithful, and murdered her. (The Legend is displayed in a flashback, central to the film, as the Ballet is central to THE RED SHOES.) Captain van der Zee is condemned by the Inquisition to die but, by God, to live and sail the sea forever until a good woman loves him enough to go with him to her death. Every seven years, he is allowed ashore for six months, to look for the woman who will give him salvation. 

In his memoir, The Magic Hour, Jack Cardiff intimates that he went platonically sweet on Ava Gardner. He found her an immensely attractive, intense and down to-earth-person. She, in turn, admired Cardiff but was torn between Frank Sinatra (who had just left his wife for her), living in Spain, and encouraging the Bullfighter Cabre, who wrote her poetry and played guitar under her window. Certainly no one ever photographed her more lovingly than Cardiff, and much of the charm of the movie is in Cardiff's hard lit Technicolor technique (which he was to move away from), photographing Gardner with exotic backlights in a number of spectacular scenes. The play of light and color has been largely restored on a recent Kino Laserdisc and DVD. 

In addition, Cardiff provides several superb action sequences, most notably the attempt on the World Auto Speed Record, and Montalvo's final corrida. In fact, I don't think I have ever seen the latter done better. (A strange note is that Cabre was actually gored in one of these scenes, and years later, Ava Gardner's career was harmed when she was hooked in the cheek and tossed by a small bull.) 

Ava Gardner, once plain Lucy Johnson, daughter of a North Carolina share cropper, was never a great actress. She was often uneven in her characterizations, her delivery of lines hesitating. And at age 29, hard living was eating away at her beauty. But as Pandora, she turns in one of her more accomplished and delightful portrayals. She is gorgeous, and Lewin presents her iconically. You come to believe, under Cardiff's marvelous lens, that she is indeed a woman men would die for. 

Ava Gardner is, if we think of Lewin's ambition, an embodiment of Vicki Page in THE RED SHOES, a girl doomed to dance until she drops. (The strange real life/Art parallel is extended in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 1954 THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA.) 

Mason, too, rises to the difficult task of embodying a legend with a stoical performance, slightly underplayed, which makes Gardner look all the better. Rawsthorne's score, at times lushly, then dramatically, or -- on occasion -- playfully, supports our lovers, who are doomed by the long reach of Fate. It is a memorable score. 

Albert Lewin (1894-1968) made only two other films in his career, and those were minor efforts: SAADIA (1953) and THE LIVING IDOL (1955). He shot his bolt with Pandora. I think he might be pleased that PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN is creeping up in critical esteem. 

I am convinced that the film, never a soap opera, thanks perhaps to the influence of THE RED SHOES, is underrated, just being discovered: A little romantic masterpiece. 

I urge you to give it a try.